**The National Bestseller** From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu, a fascinating, wild, and wonder-filled journey into Alaska, America's last frontier In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury floating university, populated by some of America's best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet John Muir. Those aboard encountered a land of immeasurable beauty and impending environmental calamity. More than a hundred years late... View More...
For the millions of fans of Jimmy Buffett's music as well as his bestselling books, Tales From Margaritaville and Where Is Joe Merchant?, here is the ultimate Jimmy Buffett philosophy on life and how to live it.As hard as it is to believe, the irrepressible Jimmy Buffett has hit the half-century mark and, in A PIRATE LOOKS AT 50, he brings us along on the remarkable journey which he took through the Southern hemisphere to celebrate this landmark birthday. Jimmy takes us from the legendary pirate coves of the Florida Keys to the ruins of ancient Cartegena.Along the way, we hear a tale or two of... View More...
Journalist Susan Casey joins a strange band of surfer-scientists on a remote island off the California coast for some close encounters with the jaws of the world's most mysterious and fearsome predators in the New York Times bestseller, The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. Susan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the great white sharks of the Farallon Islands, their dark fins swirling around a small motorboat in a documentary. These sharks were the alphas among alphas, some longer than twenty feet, and there were too many to... View More...
Over the past several years, "the American in Tuscany" has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, bookstores now burgeon with nimble, witty accounts of this clash in cultures-Americans trying to do American things in Italy and bumping against a brick wall of tradition. Before this subgenre exhausts itself, it's only fair that we hear the other side of the story-that of a native Tuscan and of dozens of Americans who have stormed through his life and homeland, determined to find in it whatever they are looking for, whether quaintne... View More...
"Superbly written and action-packed, The Last Dive ranks with such adventure classics as The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air."--Tampa TribuneSpurred on by a fatal combination of obsession and ambition, Chris and Chrisy Rouse, an experienced father-son scuba diving team, hoped to achieve wide-spread recognition for their outstanding and controversial diving skills by solving the secrets of a mysterious, undocumented, World War II German U-boat that lay only a half day's mission from New York Harbor.The Rouses found the ultimate cost of chasing their personal challenge: death from what divers dr... View More...
Over beer and hamburgers at the Two Rivers Lodge near Fairbanks, Alaska, a small group of mushers conceived a gutsy idea for a new sled dog race that would be more challenging than any other marathon race in the Far North. In 1984, mushers organized the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Soon, mushers adopted an unofficial race motto, "Survive first, race second." The Quest trail boasts fewer checkpoints, longer wilderness runs, and more campouts. The trail crosses three mountain passes, including the dreaded 3,685-foot Eagle Summit, a ki... View More...
PEN / ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing (2015 LONGLIST) P]erversely entertaining... In a truly intoxicating read that was hard to put down, Matt Higgins has managed to make real a world about as far removed from daily life as it gets. --"Daily Beast" "Matt Higgins cracks open this astonishingly dangerous sport and captures the spectacular adrenaline surges it delivers.""--"The Wall Street Journal"" " R]iveting... a must-read. A highflying, electrifying story of a treacherous sport in which every triumph is an eye blink away from becoming a disaster." --"Kirkus"(STARRED) A heart-stoppi... View More...
In August 1918 Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son settled into a primitive cabin on an island near Seward, Alaska. Kent, who during the next three decades became America's premier graphic artist, printmaker, and illustrator, was seeking time, peace, and solitude to work on his art and strengthen ties with his son. This reissue of the journal chronicling their 7-month odyssey describes what Kent called "an adventure of the spirit." He soon discovers how deeply he is "stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world" as man and boy face both the mundane and the magnificent: satisfaction in simple... View More...
